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institutional presidency during FDR’s terms. We focus specifically on the Bureau of the
Budget (BoB), the presidential staff agency that is typically at the center of this debate.
Drawing on the archival record preserved at the Roosevelt Library and the National
Archives, we seek answers to three fundamental questions:
1. What historical circumstances dictated FDR’s use of the BoB?
2. How, if at all, did that use comport with the more abstract notions of a neutrally
competent presidential staff?
3. What lessons, if any, can modern presidents learn from Roosevelt’s experiences?
The paper is organized as follows. We begin with a brief overview of the BoB’s
founding and subsequent evolution under presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. We
then examine in greater detail Roosevelt’s gradual transformation of the BoB during his
first two terms from a small, understaffed agency focused predominantly on fiscal control
to the vastly expanded post-Brownlow agency that became the centerpiece of the newly-
constructed EOP. We conclude by assessing whether Roosevelt’s use of the BoB can
clarify some of the larger issues pertaining to the debate between advocates of neutral and
responsive competency. Are scholars engaged in a quixotic quest for an ideal that cannot
exist in the modern presidential operating environment? Or should Roosevelt’s
successors exhibit more passion for Brownlow?
Convention